Every day brings new horrors

Menu

Day #202: Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Synopsis:
[From IMDb:] Searching for a cure to Alzheimer’s disease a group of scientists on an isolated research facility become the bait as a trio of intelligent sharks fight back.My take:

Whoever scored Deep Blue Sea should be applauded for understanding exactly what kind of movie this is. It’s a bombastic, over the top action/adventure movie, where everything that happens is aimed at setting up an opportunity for something to explode, or be eaten.

It’s like the Die Hard of shark movies.

And, with this in mind, allow me to put it to you that LL Cool J is the best actor in this movie.

That’s right. LL Cool J. The best actor* in a movie.

In a movie where everyone else seems to be playing down to their own own impressions of what the movie’s tone is (except for Michael Rapaport, who’s never struck me as the kind of actor that has anything approaching an acting “range,” and just seems to appear in multiple productions as himself with another name), LL Cool J’s usual style of acting not only seems more tonally appropriate, but his character brings some much needed levity. His presence is the wink in the audience’s direction that says, “Yeah, we know what kind of movie we’re making.”

There are a lot of bad shark movies out there (both of the ‘good bad’ and ‘oh, god, why!?’ variety), but I wouldn’t actually consider Deep Blue Sea to be part of their ranks. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but it embraces this fact and runs with it. This makes it one of the more fun shark movies out there.

Of course, the thing that worries me about defending Deep Blue Sea in this way is the niggling feeling that, some day, I’m going to find myself having to do the same thing for Sharknado – a movie that I’ve yet to watch, because…really? Really?

* Human actor. The bird is pretty damn good, too. Its in-movie death was a tragedy.